Dear colleagues and friends
We are delighted to present the 9th Annual Report of the Institute of Korean Studies (IKS) at Freie Universität Berlin. It hopes to provide an overview of, and reflection on, the flurry of activities our staff and students engaged in over the course of 2017.

Our greatest asset and source of pride are, of course, our students. As of last year, the number of students enrolled in our bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs stood at nearly two hundred and ninety. Over and above the formal university curriculum, they attended, and actively engaged with, additional lectures and events at our Institute, among them the Berlin Forum on Korea and North East Asia and numerous special lectures, some of them held as part of two special lecture
series titled Time and Space: Korean Modern Art and Media and Democracy.

Looking back on 2017, an event that stands out is the trip to South Korea by the then President of Freie Universität Berlin Peter-André Alt at the end of February. Accompanying President Alt, members of the Institute visited all of the FU KoreaNet partner universities, met with members of the Freie Universität Berlin alumni association, and engaged in a series of fruitful discussions with other important partners for dialogue in Korea.

As for activities and events on our “home turf”, two occasions deserve being highlighted here. One is an international workshop that brought together renowned scholars from diverse research backgrounds to exchange views on topics in intellectual history related to Confucian Academies in East Asia, the other the inaugural event of the newly established annual Berlin Forum on Korea and Northeast Asia featuring Professor Moon Chung-in, special advisor to President Moon Jae-in for unification, diplomacy and national security affairs, as the forum’s first keynote speaker.

Another major achievement of 2017 was the signing of a cooperation agreement with German think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), in English “German Institute for International and Security Affairs”, that will allow our institutions to further develop their existing partnership within the framework of a “policy-oriented research program” funded by the Korea Foundation.

When it comes to publications, we would like to give special mention to our new edited volume on German-Korean relations as well as Dr Holmer Brochlos’ introductory grammar of the Korean language published, in German, with Schmetterling Verlag. A list of further publications can be found at the end of this report.

As always, the Institute’s activities and achievements, as detailed in the following pages, would not have been possible without the help and support of our trusted partners at Freie Universität Berlin and beyond. We therefore express our deepest gratitude to our Department of History and Cultural Studies here at Freie Universität Berlin and to all our friends and supporters for working by our side in 2017 just as they have before and shall, we hope, continue to do in the future.

Prof Dr Eun-Jeung Lee
Director of the Institute of Korean Studies

Prof Dr Hannes B. Mosler
Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies/
Institute of Korean Studies